The Floating Castle
by Racke
Summary: Her summon didn't appear, and nobody saw fit to question it. It'd been a cloudy day, and why should they've been looking upwards anyway?
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

XXX

After the strange system-failure ended, the first clue they had that something had changed was the game's menu.

It didn't open. No matter how many times the players swiped their fingers at it, it wouldn't open. Almost as if it'd been entirely removed from the game.

And then there was the weight of things in their pockets, and the sudden removal of the Immortal Object pop-up. Or any pop-up at all, actually.

It was only later that they started to realize that people bled. That the players within the game suddenly had arteries and vital organs within their previously empty shells, and that the monsters had them as well.

Almost three-hundred people died in either complications during the system-failure or in the aftermath due to the way that the rules of the game had changed.

Nearly two years spent locked within the game, a bit over seventy Floors cleared, and suddenly everything seemed to have gone to hell.

The NPCs didn't seem to react overly much, though suddenly the specifics surrounding their quests became a bit more complex, a bit more geared towards something that made sense instead of something that followed MMO game-mechanics. Not to mention that something about them had shifted determinedly into 'creepy valley' territory.

Only one player would be able to gain the quest to 'slay a mid-boss' unless that player failed, and the cool-down periods surrounding the 'gather ingredients' could last for days. At the same time, NPC shop-keepers were suddenly heavily limited by the actual raw material that was being turned in on these quests.

And the places that should've been Safe Zones were just as dangerous as the rest of Aincrad.

It was madness, it was completely against what Kayaba had seemed to wish to achieve, and yet it was so horrifically similar to 'reality' that the players trapped within the death-game could do nothing but believe he'd somehow managed to grow even more insane than previously.

Then the monsters started to migrate, switching between floors if the stairs leading between them were left unguarded. And the monsters truly begun to come alive, already switching their attack-patterns into something unique for every individual of the species.

To the Clearers, the front-line groups seeking to clear the game as soon as possible, it was a horrific setback. Suddenly levels didn't matter as much as they should, and experience points didn't seem to be awarded at all, even if the stats gained from levels that had already been gained appeared to remain roughly the same.

The setback was even worse when looked on in the contest of how the Clearers had been one of the groups that had been heavily culled by the deaths. There were always some of them out in the field, and they'd been out in the field even as the system-failure had left them terrifyingly vulnerable to the monsters that they'd surrounded themselves with. And they'd been among the first players who'd really begun to explore the full extent of the monster-changes, and had lost even more as they'd been caught unaware by the changing attack-patterns.

The only reason that the death-toll hadn't been higher had been Argo's vocal announcement that with the Safe Zones gone, high-level players were needed to reinforce the defenses surrounding the non-active players. Both to protect the non-combatants from monsters who no longer considered the cities as 'off limits', but also to protect them from PK-guilds who saw the removal of the menu as a golden opportunity to kill as many people as they wanted without getting labeled as a 'red player'.

Only once they'd all gathered, did they realize just how vulnerable they were to the sudden shift in the game-mechanics. And that's when people started to panic.

However, that wasn't the end of it.

Aincrad was a floating castle. It wasn't really something people thought about, being more of an abstract memory for the players trapped within the game. They were already within the castle, and there weren't many places to find an opening from which to see out into its surroundings, and yet they were surrounded on all sides by trees and mountains and parks and cities and desserts, so it felt absurd to recall that all of the many things they could see within Aincrad were all placed within a castle that was floating in the sky.

But now-... rather than the endless clouds, now there was suddenly something _below_ them.

There were villages and farm-land, and mountains and castles, and forests and rivers. And they were so very high up.

They were so far up that it'd taken somebody putting together a rudimentary spy-glass for them to realize that there were _people_ down there, small as ants even through that enlarged view.

And there were flying monsters within Aincrad, who seemed more than happy to escape the castle and emerge into the true sky outside. And then attack those people so very far below them.

Some players felt guilty about that, but even if they could've found some way of helping the people down below, they didn't even have the manpower to consider culling the winged beasts. And that didn't include how, through monsters and PK-guilds both, they were already under siege.

Then there was the way that the players were also under the slowly dawning suspicions that they weren't _within the game_ any more, and as people started to wonder if they weren't actually in a new world entirely, the ones who had once been filled with hope at the thought of returning home to their families were left with the despair of finding that hope crushed.

Despite everything that had happened, Kayaba had promised to free them from the game, if they merely cleared it first. But if they weren't within the game, then he had no power to release them with. They were trapped, and there were already warnings of the suicide-rate beginning to climb again. Just like it had back then, during the first few months, before the Clearers had proven that the game could be beaten, had proven that there truly was a way to get back home.

Of course, it wasn't as bad now, not when people had grown used to living in Aincrad, had grown fond of the friendships and makeshift families that they'd cobbled together for themselves over the years. But it was going to happen, and it was going to be more horrible than before, since this time around the survivors wouldn't merely be left with a horrible image of a death. They'd also be left cleaning up the corpses.

Still, some took the transition easier than others, and the more active players were quickly piecing together some kind of guard-patrol. After all, even if the NPCs still functioned – in an eerily golem-like way – the guards of Aincrad had never been programmed to patrol the streets, only to keep the people within the prison imprisoned.

It took them nearly a week to realize that the guards hadn't been feeding their prisoners at all, but by then the food-shortage already present amongst the other players since the transition had forced the administrators' hands. The prison was retroactively and with great reluctance classified as a death-sentence. The people already within its walls were already dead, and they well and truly simply didn't have any food to spare.

It was in the middle of this that it happened. In the middle of the siege of the monsters against the walls of the towns, the loss of much-needed farmland to mobs who'd once left those very farm alone, the rampant PK-guilds who no longer seemed anywhere near as hindered as they'd been before, and the borderline starvation of the players.

A sailing ship that emerged from behind the clouds, making its way straight towards them. No, not _one_ ship, dozens of ships. Flying impossibly through the air, the people on them appeared fairly competent in battle, as they batted away the attacks of a few of the more curious of the flying mobs surrounding the floating castle.

It was immediately clear to most everyone _why_ they had come, though the specifics of _how_ still eluded them – since, according to every law they'd ever heard of anything physics-related, the sight of those ships should've only come-about in the fever dreams of an unusually traumatized physics-student. They were there because the flying monsters of Aincrad still attacked the people on the ground far below them.

They were here to deal with the source of the attacks.

And that's how the players of Aincrad were first introduced to the people of Halkeginia, and found to their relief that they at the very least had a shared language.

However, perhaps needless to say, the meeting included blame, confusion, disbelief, and a whole lot of posturing from both sides of the diplomatic equation.

The players of Aincrad wanted to get away from the death-trap of a world that they'd found themselves in. Once upon a time, perhaps they would've been more reluctant to abandoning the homes that they'd made for themselves over the last two years, perhaps some amongst them might've even wanted to stay in Aincrad over returning to their lives outside of the game. But now, with the continuous and escalating war against the monsters, and the desperate lack of material and food beginning to truly take its toll on the towns that were still standing, they wanted to be _anywhere else_.

And a place that wasn't hopelessly infested with monsters sounded awfully tempting to their ears.

The way that corpses were so horrifically often being found in alleys across Aincrad certainly didn't endear it to them any more. It was one thing to know that the PK-guilds were making full use of the lack of proper safe-zones, but to see the proof day in and day out in the form of dead faces staring up at you from various garbage cans was quite a bit more than anyone had the stomach for.

After all, the PK-guilds were still quite new to the prospect of actually dealing with the dead bodies of their victims.

Thankfully, there did seem to be some former members who were starting to back away from said guilds, suddenly squeamish in the face of the lives that they'd been ending all this time.

Despite that, despite all of the bad things going on around them, Aincrad was familiar. This was the place where they'd made memories and friends for the last few years. And though they would've been happy to leave the game and return to the real world, to leave it for something completely unknown left many people wary.

On the other side of the table, the Halkeginia people wanted the floating castle cleared of the flying monsters attacking its citizens. And had not arrived with the intention of arguing diplomatic semantics. They'd been sent to deal with the problem. By any means necessary.

The only thing that kept the discussions from devolving into an outright battle between the two parties was a mixture of wariness, ethics, and curiosity.

Obviously, the ones in charge of the talks were the leaders of the bigger guilds. In particular, the guilds helping out the non-active players, a few of the extremely numerous Middle Floor guilds, and the Clearing groups. Those were the ones who'd banded together into a rather peculiar type of government in the face of this latest crisis, and that meant that this was their problem to solve.

The Clearers were in charge of the monster-threat and the PKers, the middle-floor players kept an eye on the gathering of raw materials and general policing, and the low-level guilds focused their attention on keeping everyone fed and clothed.

It was a dysfunctional government, and would most likely fall apart at a moments notice, should it be allowed to do so, but it was all they had.

Unfortunately, that kind of thing-... words like that were spoken far too regularly and on far too many wide-spread subjects in Aincrad for the comfort of anyone within its walls.

Their 'government', the safety against the advancing monsters, the lack of food, the mental health of the remaining survivors-... far too many situations explained with those simple words. It was fractured and broken, prone to catastrophic failure at a stray gust of wind, and it truly was all that they had.

XXX

Louise had woken up to the clinical walls of the healer's room.

She could remember failing time and time again to summon her familiar. And she could remember desperation, and her vision turning dark.

Willpower exhaustion.

And no familiar to show for it.

Just this-... this slowly dawning resignation to what she was. What she had always been. What she had tried to escape from, but failed.

She was a failure, a nobody, someone who deserved none of what had been granted to her by her birthright.

She was a Valliere in name only. The Valliere were nobles, the Valliere were friends with the royal family of Tristain, the Valliere were _powerful_.

Louise was just Louise. A zero, a pathetic hopeless nobody, that had somehow been born into this impossibly perfect family. And now the world knew, as she herself had secretly known for a long long time now. A knowledge that she'd hidden away from even herself. Hidden in hope, in desperate hope, and in cowardly denial.

So Louise cried. Because she wasn't a Valliere, and everyone she'd ever known, everything she'd ever had, all the things that had been hers, could never belong to her. She wasn't a noble, and commoners weren't allowed to be friends with the princess, they weren't allowed to be hugged by nobles, they weren't allowed to have legendary war-heroes look at them with pride.

She didn't have family, she didn't have friends, she didn't have a mother to acknowledge her, she didn't have a sister to comfort her, she didn't have a friend to tease her. She was nothing. She was a zero, and she was a coward for not daring to face it.

So she cried, and she cried, and she kept her sobs as quiet as she could, because a nobody shouldn't disturb a noble. And she was even worse than a nobody, because she had pretended-... she had pretended to be _somebody_.

And now the masquerade had fallen, and those that she'd loved, those that had loved the _somebody_ that she'd pretended to be, would turn to her in disgust and betrayal. Because she was _nothing_.

XXX

The headmaster had been distracted even as he signed the papers that would expel her from the academy – gracefully, of course, it wouldn't do to cause offense to the Valliere name for something as simple as their supposed daughter in fact being a commoner who'd spent all this time pretending otherwise. But that distracted air was understandable, Louise admitted to herself as she stared ahead with blank eyes.

She'd been unconscious for nearly three days, and on the morning of the fourth day reports had started coming in of monster-attacks. By now, there'd been dozens of them, and rumors were running amok amongst the student populace.

Apparently, a sliver of land had broken off Albion – or simply risen to the sky, much like Albion had in ancient times – and it'd become a nest to all manner of foul flying beasts. And that sliver of land now hovered far above Tristain's borders, allowing the monsters free reign of the sky.

It was a very unpleasant scenario, especially with the civil-war brewing in Albion, and the planned marriage between the Princess of Tristain and the Emperor of Germania. All connected together, it was a very inconvenient time to have monsters running rampant around the countryside.

In comparison, the final acceptance that Louise was a failure and a commoner and should never have been allowed within the academy's walls in the first place-... it was quite lackluster, for someone who was, if not officially in charge of dealing with the problem then at least high enough on the hierarchy of nobility that he was forced to pay attention to it.

Louise bowed low as the man handed her the papers, still keeping her face perfectly blank.

No, her face merely was perfectly blank. She didn't feel anything. She was too drained to feel. Too empty. Just an empty shell of _nothing_ -...

Holding the papers of her expulsion in her hands, her face still expressionless, Louise made her way out of the headmaster's office.

She was to return to the Valliere estate, so that they may decide her fate. Decide her punishment for disguising herself as a noble, for reaching above her station.

XXX

She couldn't wear the cloak of a noble, nor the emblem of the academy.

But with neither of those things present on her body, there was no telling what might befall her on her way to the family estate. Of course the Valliere family might send a carriage, but such a thing-... such a thing was not for a commoner to demand. Especially not a commoner who had pretended to be their daughter, pretended to have been of their blood.

No, she would reach the Valliere estate by her own power, pathetic and nonexistent though it was.

But again, that left her with the complications of not having an emblem marking her as something for bandits and thieves to avoid. And though they didn't belong to her – they were of the Valliere family, bought for their supposed daughter, never for herself, the commoner – the clothes available to her were of obviously wealthy make. A prime target for greedy bandits if there ever was one, not to mention the recent monster-attacks.

No, she would need something to dissuade those who might decide to try their luck.

It was for the Valliere family to decide her punishment, whatever that might be, not for monsters and commoners and bandits. Though, she supposed, it was possible that aforementioned punishment would be lenient enough that it could include exile from the estate – there would be no point in banishing a corpse from their land – and from there it was highly likely that she would indeed be left to the mercies of exactly those things.

But that was later, once those she'd deceivingly called family had decided on how to deal with her unfortunate existence.

So she would need a deterrent. And she could not wear the cloak of a noble – for that was not her place, never had been, she'd just pretended all this time, tried so _desperately hard to pretend_ – so she would be forced to resort to other ways of doing so.

Her conclusion had been displeasing to her, though again it'd been the only conclusion she could admit to.

She would need a sword, something to wear in full view of those who might consider her a target, something which would dissuade all from approaching her, without declaring her a noble – because she wasn't, had never been, would never be, she was nothing, _nothing_. It was a displeasing choice, for she didn't have a sword readily available to use in such a manner, meaning that she would have to use funds that didn't belong to her in order to purchase such a thing.

The horses of the Academy belonged to the students, and she wasn't a student. So she would have to ask for assistance from the commoner servant staff who would regularly take a carriage into town for the sake of purchasing food and other necessities.

She pretended not to notice the shock on the maid's face as she made her requests, but she didn't have to feign her empty expression as she explained her purpose and reasoning. She pretended not to notice the way the maid's eyes teared up, the way her finger's twitched as if to reach out and grab her as she began to realize just why this tiny noble with a hollow expression didn't wear a cloak.

Whether by pity, sympathy, or disinterest on the matter, the staff-member allowed for her presence on the carriage into town.

XXX

The shopkeeper was a sleazy kind of man, and once he realized that she truly had no interest in purchasing anything of any actual worth, he dismissively gestured her towards a barrel of swords.

Most of them were rusty, or almost broken, or some combination of both.

But then, she didn't need a sword that could be used, just something that looked like it could still be wielded. It was purely meant as a deterrent.

One of the swords spoke up when her hand brushed against its hilt, and she startled a bit, never having seen a talking sword before.

The shopkeeper yelled at the sword to keep quiet, to not scare his customers away, but the sword was rude enough to not worry about the man's opinion on the matter.

Lifting the sword from the barrel, Louise admitted that it looked like it could be intimidating enough, like it could still be used despite its rusty appearance. Upon seeing her interest, the shopkeeper promptly began a sales-pitch, suddenly praising the sword he'd previously insulted, probably in an attempt to be rid of it.

Louise didn't overly care either way, but the sword was within her budget, and fit the criteria she had placed for herself. So she turned dead eyes towards the sleazy man, and told him that she'd be taking the sword a long way away, that it would never darken his doorstep again, and that she'd only be willing to do so for the right prize.

The sword, Derflinger, bickered and argued and grumbled and muttered at the shopkeeper actually considering the offer. But when she moved into the open air once more, the money pouch that the Valliere family had given to their daughter, was barely a single coin lighter than it had been.

It took the sword several city-blocks before it began to realize what the shopkeeper already had.

The girl carrying it was empty. She moved with the same rigid efficiency as a golem made by an amateur mage, and her expression was as emotional as that of a corpse.

It took until she'd found another carriage going in the right direction – hours after that – before the sword finally realized why.

It had been bought by a girl that was marching voluntarily to her own execution.

When asked for her reasoning, why she wasn't attempting to escape and survive, she'd bluntly replied that there would be no reason for such actions, since she was nothing. Nothing at all.

Derflinger wasn't physically capable of frowning – it didn't have eyebrows or a face to distort – but upon hearing that answer, for the first time in a very _very_ long time it made a valid attempt. The sword had been sold to a young girl, suicidal with guilt and despair-driven apathy.

And it wondered if it might not actually pity her, a bit, despite of how it lacked a heart with which to feel. But of course, Louise was too busy staring blankly ahead to register or care to even notice the underlying importance behind her new sword's sudden silence.

XXX

It'd happened so fast.

One moment, the carriage had continued to rattle down along the dirt-road, and the next the horses were panicking. Panicking in a way that the driver had immediately realized was due to them picking up a smell on the wind.

Then there was a screech that sounded a bit like a gryphon, and suddenly a monster whose species she didn't recognize at all had appeared from the sky. It had wings, and a beak, and a lot of claws, but it also seemed to have scales were a proper gryphon should've had fur, and the coloration was strange.

If asked about it, Louise could never have explained why she drew her rusty sword against it. Why she stepped in between it and the old man on whose carriage she'd paid to hitch a ride. Or how she'd managed to pull the rusty sword from its sheath in the first place.

She could give excuses, and she could make assumptions, but she didn't think she'd ever truly be able to explain it.

But, in the face of a monster almost three times her size, and with her own scrawny arms trying to wield a sword that was probably more than a bit too big for her, Louise had never stood a chance.

Still, from the way she'd waved the blade in the monster's face, it'd grown far more interested in killing her, than it seemed interested in attacking the commoner. Something which the sensible man took advantage of, by urging his horses onwards down the road and far away from the eerily empty little girl and what was soon going to be her death. Leaving Louise alone with the monster that she stood no chance of defeating.

Talking sword or no, Derflinger couldn't wield itself, and Louise had never been talented with physical activities. The outcome hadn't come as a surprise for either of them.

However, as Louise stared up at the sky, trying to ignore the pain in her side of what might very well have been a lethal wound, and the monster turned to her downed form. Something odd happened.

Or... well, maybe it wasn't so odd. Louise had grown up with Cattleya Valliere after all, even if she wasn't truly that beautiful woman's sister. She had grown used to admiring predators that would've most likely left many others her age scared out of their wits.

Instead of flinching backwards, or trying to escape, or reaching for a sword in order to fight, Louise patted the monstrous beast on its beak.

Despite the strangeness of its appearance, it was quite beautiful in its own way. Sharp and deadly, graceful and dangerous. And despite how she ought to have feared it for the danger it posed, how she ought to have hated it for the damage it'd already caused her, Louise couldn't help but admire it.

The monster stared down at her, eyes merciless.

But that was okay. She wasn't really sure if she wanted to survive anyway, and at least she'd died protecting another. Perhaps her life, pathetic and insignificant and deceitful and hopeless though it had been, had served some minor purpose in that.

She closed her eyes, a brief sigh of something almost resembling contentment slipping past her lips. She felt her consciousness begin to fade, and she wondered briefly if the monster would eat her, or if it'd merely killed her for sport.

Then everything turned black.

XXX

Kayaba had designed them to react to human words.

Not to the point of understanding even if they were unable to speak it, but enough that they had a... 'foundation' of sorts. They understood inflictions in voices, and they were intelligent enough that they could learn to pick up on repeated phrases, and they would react accordingly.

To Kayaba, they'd merely been another tiny little piece of his masterwork. But they'd grown since then. After all, the rules that had once controlled them, had forced them to obey, were no longer present.

If they had no reason to remain on their assigned Floors, then they wouldn't remain there. If they were curious enough to explore, then they would explore. If they were hungry, they'd find something edible. If they were tired, then they'd rest.

Broken off from the system that had forced them into mindless obedience, the monsters had grown flesh and bones.

And whilst some had used that to hunt and kill those whom they still considered 'enemies', others had used it to slip away from sight, or to turn against those other monsters who'd once been their allies as hunger convinced them that they were the best prey to hunt. There were hundreds of species, and whilst many of them were predators, some of them _weren't_.

But – impossible though it might've seemed – when a pathetically weak human child had attempted to distract one of the predators from the appetizing non-monster and the older human, when it had failed so pathetically easily, when it had been dying, when it had patted the monster on its beak, when it had smiled even as it began to die... when a monster met a human who it didn't have to fear and who in return seemed so content in its presence... something had changed.

There weren't any programming to demand mercilessness. There were no powerful humans to mercilessly protect itself from. There was just the two of them. One dying, the other watching the first.

Until a strange disembodied voice that it could almost understand, asked it to help the child.

It had no reason to do so, it had no reason to listen, it had no reason to watch over the dying child in the first place. But even so, the monster began to lick the child's wound clean as best as it could.

XXX

Louise woke to a metallic voice, and coldness.

She was so very very cold. And in pain. But she was almost more cold than she was in pain. And she was more tired still than she was cold.

But the voice was telling her to grab on. No, it was _ordering_ her to grab on. So, she allowed herself to be shifted according to the voice's instructions, and she held onto the feathers. Big feathers, and she could feel dry scales shifting underneath her.

When whatever she was resting on finally seemed to deem the position correct, it started to walk. Every step was painful, and made her entire body throb in an almost feverish haze.

By the time she heard the beating of wings, she was already slipping back into the darkness, despite the metallic voice's continued orders of remaining awake, commanding her to hold on.

But before she completely succumbed, she caught the briefest of glimmer of rusty metal held in a gigantic bird-like claw.

XXX

The landing woke her again, the heavy thud causing pain to blast through her body in a way that nearly knocked her right back out again.

The metallic voice was shouting now, words that blurred together into an unintelligible mass, but with an undertone of urgency.

She was so very cold, but the dry scales she was lying on were warm, and she still hurt, everything hurt now. As if the pain from the wound was echoing even down into her fingertips.

Louise eyes slipped open briefly, giving her a glimpse of warily frightened faces, of commoners. Like she was. A useless, deceitful, commoner. A shameful blot upon a noble family's good name.

Her eyes slipped closed again.

At least they could perhaps hide away her disgusting existence from the world, now that she was dying. It shouldn't be too difficult to pressure the headmaster into giving a different official reason for her expulsion from the academy, something that fit with the way she'd died.

Perhaps she might simply go down in history as a little girl running off to try and fight monsters, despite her teacher's attempts to dissuade her? It would be a lie – she was _nothing_ – but at least such a tale might serve as a deterrent for future generations of the Valliere family.

There'd at least be some use to be had in her, if she could just die fast enough, before anyone managed to bring her back to health.

But she wanted to _live_ -...!

A last, defiant thought, before she was swallowed again by darkness.

XXX

Derflinger wasn't sentimental. After six-thousand years of existence, being passed from hand to hand, participating in war after war, the sword honestly didn't much care about the people wielding it.

Oh, it might still remember its first wielder fondly, but the Gandalfr had always been special.

And really, when it came down to it, Derflinger was a sword, it had no reason to think of things in the same manner as regular people did.

But still... it would much rather be wielded, or at least be carried around, than to be forever trapped in the mangy little barrel in the shop of that sleazy little man. So, when it realized that the monster that had so easily defeated its current wielder had no intentions of actually finishing her off – instead actually seeming to try and keep her warm and protected – it decided to help.

It'd taken a lot of talking before the monster had figured out what it needed to do, and then it had carried them both to the nearest human settlement. Most places usually had some kind of way to contact a water-mage, and the girl wouldn't last for long unaided.

Convincing the villagers of said settlement to actually provide the aid necessary for the sake of its current wielder's survival proved nowhere near as challenging. Apparently, one of the civilians recognized her face as belonging to a nearby noble family, and though her current wardrobe caused some confusion, it hadn't stopped them from contacting the local healer.

However, the monster didn't want to let the girl out of its sight, and so the healer had reluctantly been forced to try and heal her out in the open air.

From the person's mutterings, they weren't very pleased with that situation at all, but they were professional enough to not let such things stop them. Or even, in fact, for their hands to shake from the nervousness of having such a strange and lethal-looking monster staring down at them and carefully tracking their every move.

XXX

The Valliere family was an old one.

Well known for their ability with magic, and their fierce rivalry with the Germanian family, the Zerbst, they were closely linked to the throne of Tristain. Some of the royalty's closest and most loyal supporters.

Perhaps they would've managed to grow even more famous had it ever been publicly known that the legendary Karin of the Heavy Wind was indeed the family's duchess these days. But it wouldn't have an especially big leap in renown, and would've most likely caused far more trouble than such a thing would be worth.

She was retired, anyway. So there truly wasn't any need for her name to be spread around. That was Karin's own feelings on the matter.

However, should her fame in any way have eased – or perhaps even removed – the burden from her youngest daughter's shoulders, she would've used it in a heartbeat.

She'd long since known that Louise was having... _difficulties_ with magic. But she'd assumed that Tristain's Academy of Magic would be able to clear away any such problems, allowing her to step up into the role as the youngest Valliere without complications.

For her to be expelled. No, for her to be expelled because of _lacking magic_ , was absurd. Commoners didn't make things explode into smithereens at the wave of a wand. Louise's magic was difficult to understand, and despite herself Karin had found herself at a loss on what to do about it, but there was no doubt that her youngest daughter was magical.

Even so, that ability to explode things had apparently not been enough for the teachers of the Academy. And now Karin would be dealing with the political fallout of her youngest daughter not being a 'proper noble'.

Of course, this meant that quite a number of blustering fools would be hinting at her having invited another man into her bed than her husband, but thankfully a few glares generally at least kept them from doing so in her presence. And beyond that, there were of course some of the more devout who assumed that Louise's 'lack' of magic was a sign from the Founder Brimir about the Valliere family losing his favor.

All in all, it was a political nightmare, only kept at bay by the rather timely distraction in regards to the strange floating island that had appeared above Tristain, and which appeared to be completely infested with flying monstrosities of a nature none had ever seen or heard of before.

That was a rather pleasant distraction actually. Though it wasn't something she could truly approve of, with how the monsters were going after commoners who couldn't do anything to defend themselves.

But yes, if it could've given Louise control over her magic-... There were few things that Karin could imagine herself refusing to do in order to achieve that.

It wasn't just for the sake of removing the rumors of her activities in the bed-chamber, but also a desire to ease her youngest daughter's burden. Louise had always been the one daughter who'd reminded Karin of herself the most. The passionate spitfire who was probably more than a bit too stubborn for her own good, and loyal to a fault. And when it came down to it, Karin could so easily tell how hard she took every single one of her failures, and her heart ached at the sight of it, even as she knew that it would be those very failures that would allow her daughter to grow.

Except now, she was almost assuredly quite distraught. Though, knowing Louise, she was probably already halfway into coming up with an elaborate plan to prove everyone wrong, to show them just how much magic she truly had. Which was unfortunately, not at all what her sister Cattleya would be doing.

Karin allowed herself the smallest of sighs as she recalled some of her middle-daughter's many schemes. And the dawning resignation to dealing with the fallout of Cattleya attempting to 'prove' to the rest of the world that Louise was magical.

Cattleya was the kind of person who wouldn't hesitate for a moment to deceive the entirety of Tristain, if it would help protect her younger sister. Which in this context would mean to find a way to convince everyone involved that Louise could indeed do magic. Even if she couldn't.

Hopefully, the gentlest of her daughters wouldn't be doing anything truly heretical in order to help. Or break Louise's heart by letting the girl ever find out that her much-adored older sister didn't believe enough in her own ability to _not_ concoct a backup plan that would be based on an attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the Church.

Still, the monster-attacks needed to be dealt with, and Karin fully supported the Crown's decision to send what little navy they had to attack the source, even if it meant depleting any possible reserve in the likely case that the Reconquista decided to venture beyond Albion's borders.

Now, if she could just figure out where in the world her youngest daughter had disappeared to...

XXX

Henrietta frowned down at the report in front of her.

She was a princess, still most definitely not a regent, not yet anyway, so it was highly doubtful that she'd be able to make any true decisions on how to deal with the situation. But she had to keep herself informed of what happened in her kingdom, and this had most definitely classified as important. Aside from that, it wasn't as if the Cardinal currently working in the crown's name wouldn't listen to her opinion at all.

There were more than enough records of those in charge of grooming the new king or queen trying to make their own changes on the kingdom, regardless of the wants or needs of said future king or queen. Or rather, there were enough records of the many many _many_ gruesome and sometimes downright horrific punishments that her ancestors had doled out at being usurped, once they'd managed to reclaim their crown.

No, he'd listen to her opinion. From what she knew of him, he was actually more inclined to follow along as her advisor rather than try to handle things on his own. Which was probably why she hadn't even needed to specifically ask for this report.

But that didn't make the report any easier to make any sense of.

There'd been monster-attacks all across Tristain. The monsters were of a type that had never been seen before, and were all capable of flight. When trying to locate the source of the monsters, a floating island had been spotted, far smaller than Albion, but impressively sized nonetheless. In response to this discovery, the Tristain fleet had been amassed to wipe out the monsters at the source.

Thus far, everything made sense. The problem stemmed from the fact that upon arriving at the island, the fleet had found that it wasn't an island.

It was a castle. A floating castle. A floating castle the size of a mountain, a very large mountain.

Ignoring the floating bit – because that could easily be explained by wind-stones – the question that quickly became obvious was 'why?'. Why would anyone build – or carve, the report hadn't been clear on the exact methods of fabrication – a castle the size of a mountain? What possible reason could there be to either hollow out an entire mountain, or to build something so immensely large?

There were possible explanations, of course. It could've once been a mountain unusually rich with precious metals or gems, that had been hollowed out through mining, and then transformed into a castle. Or it could've been designed by a disturbingly ambitious ruler who wanted it to be capable of comfortably housing the population of an entire country.

In the end, even the fact that the island was in fact a castle could be explained away. It could be made sense of.

The problem _really_ started when the captains of the ships had moved closer to the 'ground floor' of the castle. And had seen people.

It'd been shocking enough that some had voiced thoughts of the monster-attacks merely being the prelude of an invading army. Thankfully though, calmer and more diplomatic minds had prevailed, and so one of the ships had approached a balcony of sorts that looked reasonably suitable for docking-purposes.

Which had been when things apparently became _really_ strange.

The inhabitants of the floating castle spoke their language, though their accents sometimes sounded a bit off. They were dressed in armor, and equipped with swords and weapons of all kinds. And they apparently had absolutely no idea where they were, or how they'd gotten there.

From what the spokesperson had been able to convey, it seemed as if the castle had been designed by a genius madman of some sort, who had trapped them – all ten thousand of them – within it for over two years. The castle had always been filled with monsters, but the madman had promised them that on the uppermost floor of the castle there would be a way to escape.

They'd reached the seventy-second floor when something had malfunctioned in the madman's design. Something had changed, and the monsters had started to run completely amok, instead of following their usually set patterns. Which had led to the remaining survivors occupying the lowest thirteen floors, and _rapidly_ losing ground.

They were in fact losing so much ground to the advancing monsters that they no longer had enough food to feed themselves.

But no, even if such events were horrifying and disturbing on equal levels, what truly bothered both Henrietta and the author of the report that she was currently frowning at, was one final detail.

There were people who weren't people. The entire castle was populated with eerily humanoid golems. Golems who were capable of farming, crafting, shopkeeping, and all manners of associated things.

And that should be impossible.

There was no magic that could possibly create something like what the soldiers described. At least not without necromancy involved. Which was forbidden. Very much forbidden.

Nobody with whom the chosen diplomats had spoken to had given them any clues as to where the floating castle had come from, or of a way to track down the probably-heretic mage of a madman who'd trapped them in this floating castle which he'd apparently named 'Aincrad'.

There was of course also the interesting lack of any mage whatsoever within the population of those who'd been trapped. Interesting mostly because the monsters that the castle was inhabited with weren't exactly easy to kill, even for a trained mage. And these commoners had somehow managed to kill their way through _seventy-two_ floors filled with them. There'd been casualties, of course, but it was still an immensely impressive feat, especially since amongst the ten-thousand trapped, a bit over six-thousand had managed to survive for over two years.

It was an even more impressive number when it was put into the context of around two-thousand people having willingly leapt over the edge in a hopeless attempt to escape during those first few months of their capture. Which would've only left around eight-thousand commoners to finish fighting their way through the monsters.

Impressive numbers, considering how they didn't have magic on their side. Impressive enough numbers that the author to the report suspected that they were either lying through their teeth about something – the amount of floors cleared, or the amount of people who'd participated originally – or they were impossibly skilled with their weapons. And not just that there were people of skill caught up within the group, but rather that the entire population was somehow unnaturally predisposed to being good at wielding weapons.

Either way, the whole situation was giving Henrietta a headache.

XXX

Louise didn't wake up on a bed.

There were feathers, and dry scales, and for one moment of confusion she wondered if she'd fallen asleep amongst a pile of Cattleya's more unique pets.

Then she heard the not-gryphon's cry. Much softer than before, but still distinct enough that her memory came flashing back.

She'd been dying. Dying. Dying like she ought to have done, because she was a failure, a deceitful commoner pretending to be a noble, a disgusting blot upon the Valliere family's good name.

And yet she'd lived.

Louise stared blearily up at the dark sky above her.

She'd failed, even at dying, and yet-... and yet she was happy? Relieved? Relief so powerful that she felt her eyes watering long before she felt the pain of her wound seeping past the general chill of what she guessed was blood-loss.

A choked sob slipping past her lips, Louise wondered at her selfishness.

She was a commoner, a useless deceitful commoner, and yet-... she wanted to live. She wanted to survive. Her death was the only way to repent for her deceitfulness, for dragging the Valliere name through the mud, but she didn't want to die.

And for the first time since she'd failed her summoning and finally proven beyond doubt that she was a 'zero', Louise wanted to run away. To turn around and disappear, to escape into nowhere and never face the rightful punishment that should be applied to her by the Valliere family for the slight of a mere commoner using their name.

It wasn't a proper feeling, it wasn't something that she should feel, after all of her deceitfully selfish actions. But that didn't make it any less true.

She wanted to live.

XXX

It would scar.

How laughable, the way the water-mage tried to break it to her gently. Louise was probably going to be executed for impersonating being of noble birth, and he was worried over a scar that wasn't even visible underneath her clothes?

Oh, certainly, it wouldn't be an even remotely subtle scar. It being something that stretched across both her abdomen and back in a thick jagged line, but that still didn't make it any less of a non-issue.

Dismissing the man in the politest way possible – she was a commoner, being anything less than absolutely polite was an outrageous breach of protocol – since he quite clearly didn't want to be in the strange gryphon's presence, Louise picked up her talking sword and turned her attention to the scaled beast.

She hesitated for a long moment, not entirely sure what she wanted to do, before she bowed deeply. "You spared my life, thank you."

The almost-gryphon didn't seem to understand her words, but at the same time she had the feeling that it understood her perfectly.

Louise straightened, staring down the monster that could've so easily killed her. "But you scared away my carriage." She channeled everything she'd ever seen Countess Valliere – never mother, never again, she wasn't her daughter, she wasn't a noble, the legendary woman wouldn't ever be proud of her, Louise was nothing, she was a zero – into as stately an expression as she could manage. "I would ask for compensation for that."

She heard whispers breaking out amongst the commoners who'd arrived to watch the spectacle, but she paid them no mind. The only thing that mattered was if the gryphon in front of her would bend itself to her will.

The moment stretched on, long and awkward, before the gryphon took a step closer, its sharp beak awfully close to Louise's all-too-vulnerable face.

Then it turned slightly, taking a position that was bizarrely familiar. She'd seen enough of the gryphon knights to remember what it signified.

"You have my thanks." She accepted the offer.

It was both easier and harder than she would've thought to mount it. On the one hand, she'd seen knights do it witch such fluid ease that she couldn't imagine it being 'difficult', but on the other hand she was both far shorter than those same knights, and the almost-gryphon in question didn't have a saddle.

Still, in seemingly no time at all, she watched from high in the air on the back of a scaled gryphon as the town where her life had barely been saved shrunk into the distance.

Fighting against the irrational urge – to live, to survive, to escape, to run away – to turn the gryphon away from the direction of the Valliere estate, Louise resolutely continued onwards.

She might be a commoner, a deceitful nobody not worthy of anything that she'd been granted, but she most certainly wasn't a coward.

She would face the Valliere family, she would apologize and accept her punishment for her actions against their family's reputation, and for her sins towards the Church for impersonating a noble. And even if she would bow her head, for she had been in the wrong, she would face those punishments with her back straight.

XXX

When Louise had arrived at the Valliere estate, flying in on some sort of scaled gryphon, Karin had been severely tempted to both sigh in relief and roll her eyes in exasperation.

It made perfect sense for the girl to recklessly decide to attempt the Springtime Summoning Ritual on her lonesome, despite how the Academy had already classified her attempt as a pointless failure. And of course she would've done it halfway to the estate out in the middle of nowhere without any potential assistance, desperately wanting to arrive in smug defiance of their attempts to smear her good name.

Yes, that had been the thought that had passed through her mind right then, leaving her to begin thinking of a proper punishment for such a childish lapse in conduct, even as she prepared some kind of proper compliment for her accomplishment in summoning such a familiar. Even if it really would've been better that she'd done so _before_ being expelled.

Then she'd noticed the lack of her cloak. The cloak that Louise had always been somewhat obsessive about wearing. And she was wearing a sword – with no signs of any wand – old and rusty, and far too large for her small frame.

Then she saw the rip in her clothes.

The bandages visible through her shirt, the careful way she walked, as if she hadn't quite healed enough to travel properly yet.

Karin prepared to scold her youngest daughter for her recklessness, because going gallivanting across the countryside when she should be in bed and _healing_ from whatever encounter had caused that was quite a far bit beyond general childishness.

Then Louise turned to the beast, and bowed. Deeply.

There was a moment where the gryphon-like creature tilted its head as if in thought, before it simply took to the air once again, almost dismissively.

Louise straightened with the slightest of winces, and turned towards her mother.

By now, Karin's original impression had begun to crumble. But it was only when she saw Louise's face that it finally fell apart completely.

This was not a girl returning home in victory. This was something-... something _else_. Something broken, hollow, and yet somehow defiant.

It took her a long moment to realize from where she recognized that expression.

It'd been a man. A warrior really. He'd betrayed the army to their enemies, because his loved ones had been kept hostage. Even when he'd done it, he'd known that they were already dead, that there wasn't any real hope of ever seeing them again. But he'd done it anyway. And when she'd furiously glared at him from behind bars – the night before his public execution for treason – he'd looked up at her with that same expression.

It wasn't quite suicidal, nowhere near the reckless hatred that sometimes cropped up amidst the ranks in wartime. The man had accepted his execution as his due, as deserved, even as he couldn't help but cling to the hope of surviving.

There was definitely steel in that expression, but it wasn't a kind of face that she'd ever wanted to see be worn by her children.

Louise was marching to her gallows. She was doing it with her back straight, her steps sure, and her expression blank. But she was marching to her gallows, to her death, and she didn't _want to be there_.

Louise had nearly reached her, when Karin finally managed to disbelievingly connect the dots.

Her daughter believed that she would be calling for her execution.

Her _daughter_ thought that Karin was going to _kill her_.

Not yell at her, not punish her, not humiliate her, not hurt her. She thought that she was going to willingly order her death.

Clutching at straws, Karin wondered if her daughter had somehow managed to kill the pope, because then perhaps that kind of thinking might be due. She would in all likelihood probably consider handing over her youngest daughter to her executioners if she'd _murdered the pope_.

Except, surely someone would've mentioned that? That wasn't the kind of thing that would've been swept under the rug. Not when the killer remained at large.

She wasn't wearing a noble's cloak. She wasn't wearing a wand.

It clicked.

Her daughter had failed the Summoning Ritual.

Her daughter had failed at her last hope to prove herself as a mage.

Her daughter had failed at proving that she had magic.

Her daughter had failed at proving that she was worthy of having the title of 'noble'.

And despite that Karin knew for a fact that her daughter couldn't possibly not have magic – not with the explosions that her every spell resulted in. She came to the startling and slightly horrifying realization that Louise _didn't understand that_.

Her daughter had given up. And with that final surrender, something within her had broken beyond repair.

It didn't matter what Cattleya might be planning, it didn't matter if Eleanor would rage about it, it didn't matter even if Karin tried to explain her own reasoning for the faith she'd placed on her youngest daughter's shoulders. None of that mattered, because her daughter had stopped believing.

But even so, that surrender shouldn't have broken her. Karin knew far too well how stubborn Louise could be, and there was no doubt in her mind that even if magic was proven to forever be beyond her reach, she would've still found some way to try and rub it in the faces of everyone who doubted her.

And yet, Louise was broken enough that she'd willingly walk into what she for some reason believed to be her death. And why would she ever even consider that thought? How could she imagine that Karin would ever have her daughter executed for something like _this_?

Another piece of the puzzle slid into place.

Her daughter didn't have magic. Without magic, she couldn't prove that she was a noble. Without being able to prove that she was a noble, she was a commoner. If she was a commoner, she was a blot on the Valliere family's good name.

Even if Karin didn't approve – _couldn't_ approve – she could follow the circular leap of logic that had led her youngest daughter to this moment.

In the midst of horror and guilt, a peculiar sense of pride bloomed in her chest.

Louise had come here, unquestioningly believing that it would mean to be executed, and even if she wanted to live, she had been willing to accept that punishment.

Few people had enough steel in them to willingly walk with their back straight towards their own gallows.

Eleanor was skilled beyond Karin's wildest dreams, Cattleya was both kinder than she herself would've ever managed and just as fiercely stubborn, but perhaps Karin had always favored Louise just a little bit over her sisters. Silently. In the depths of her heart where her Rule of Steel didn't hold enough sway to silence such unbecoming thoughts in their entirety.

"Louise Francois la Blanc de la Valliere," she started, causing the girl to straighten imperceptibly. "welcome home."

There was a shiver, a kind of furious refusal to move from the girl as she visibly struggled to open her mouth and deny that welcome. To deny her own right to that welcoming.

Karin unfastened her own cloak with practiced ease. "I have three daughters." She stated with absolute conviction, draping the cloak of a noble across the girl's shoulders in a move carefully calibrated to be too fast for her to resist. "Do not make me a liar, Louise Francois la Blanc de la Valliere."

She didn't step back, remaining close enough that she _could_ simply reach out and pull her into a hug, but still refusing to do so. Magic or no magic, her world crashing down around her ears or not, their relationship was what it was, and to attempt to change it now would merely be pointlessly patronizing.

But she remained at that distance, too close to allow her daughter to forget about her presence, as she could almost feel Louise tensing awkwardly through the air between them.

This was her daughter, and she refused to let the girl believe anything different.

After a very long moment, Louise opened her mouth again. "I'm home, mother." Her voice wavered and broke, and there were tears falling down her face, but she'd accepted it.

Magic or no magic, Louise was her daughter. And anyone who _ever_ tried to imply otherwise would soon remember why people still spoke in fearful reverence of the 'Heavy Wind'.

XXX

 **A/n: There's been a few ALO crossovers playing with the 'summoned world' idea, but I haven't seen any SAO ones, so I wanted to try it out.**

 **Yeah, Louise here is pretty depressing, but she's kind of just realizing that** _ **her entire way of life is a lie**_ **. As in: every friend she's ever had, everyone who's ever put faith in her, everything that her life is built on, has just come tumbling down like dominoes. Because she bet everything on being able to summon a familiar, and (as far she knows) she failed. Not exactly a pleasant place to be in, emotionally.**

 **The second chapter (which will include the Epilogue, because this fic really isn't all that long) is focused more on the SAO-end of the spectrum, and politics and stuff. It'll also include what happened to Kayaba, and hopefully answer any other questions you might have.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

XXX

Henrietta knew that it was in all likelihood quite foolish indeed of her, but that didn't change her decision.

The floating castle 'Aincrad' and its monster-infestation was the closest thing to a front-line that Tristain's current crisis had. Magic and blood and swords, that's what the reports unanimously agreed on as her soldiers lent what aid they could to the people under siege, whilst still trying to keep the flying monsters contained within the enormous castle.

There were children there, and nobody was sure what to do with them. On the one hand, the children needed to be protected – everyone agreed on that – but on the other hand, the citizens of Aincrad had no reason to trust Tristain to actually protect them. Considering how close they'd come to being overrun in the beginning, everyone were reluctant to allow them to remain within the floating castle, but at the same time they couldn't leave as there was no safer place to retreat to.

It irked Henrietta that her country was not even trusted with the caring of the children from a civilization on the brink of destruction, even if she could grudgingly admit that they might have good reason to be wary of any offer she might make.

The people of Aincrad had never seen magic before her soldiers arrived, stemming from lands so far away that they'd never seen even a glimpse of the Founder's favor, but they'd been betrayed by this madman 'Kayaba' once before, and were loathe to trust again.

The reports stated time and again that the people was a powder-keg waiting to go off. Too much desperation, too many hopes suddenly snatched away, too many lingering scars of separation from the families and loved ones that they'd left behind two years ago. They were stressed to the point of breaking, a front-line stocked with green soldiers that had been forced to sink or swim, several thousand people with more emotional scarring than longtime war-veterans.

There was no doubt in anyone's mind that they were teetering on the edge, just one moment away from giving in and simply breaking down completely.

All signs pointed to having someone of any importance whatsoever arriving in Aincrad to be an absolutely fantastically foolish idea. But that didn't change that that was exactly what Henrietta was going to do.

She needed to see with her own eyes what was happening, she needed to show to these people that Tristain wanted to help, that _she_ wanted to help. She couldn't allow this to become the slaughter that it had such potential for devolving into.

She needed to help these people, because even if her future role as queen would not let her sacrifice her own people for the sake of another, there was a disturbingly logical part of her pointing out that she could use a few extra soldiers to bolster Tristain's ranks. Especially soldiers with such obvious talent and experience in fighting monsters.

The possibility of having a floating fortress from which to harass Albion's forces should the Reconquista prove victorious... well, that was another voice in her head that she honestly hoped would never have to be spoken out loud.

XXX

Kayaba was dead.

That was a phrase that none of them dared mention. They'd seen it, they'd heard it, they'd known it. But that was a phrase that none of them would ever dare speak.

Kayaba was dead. He'd died protecting them, he'd died sacrificing himself, he'd died killing an advancing Floor Boss on his lonesome. He'd died buying them time for an evacuation.

The players mourned his death, the noble knight who'd once seemed invincible, who'd likely go down in history for his unselfish bravery in this latest horror they'd all been exposed to. They mourned him for he'd carried the name of 'Heathcliff'.

Kayaba was dead, and the players unknowingly mourned the loss.

Kayaba was dead, and none could ever learn of his final words, the words that he'd spoken with Heathcliff's lips. None could know because they needed someone to blame, and they needed someone to admire.

Kayaba was dead, and the few people who knew would keep their mouth forever sealed. Even as they could never again truly speak Heathcliff's name in awe.

Asuna «The Flash» was now in charge of the Knights of the Blood. And Kirito «The Black Swordsman» was now unquestionably the strongest player alive, as his only known 'rival' for the title was no more.

Perhaps it spoke of how desperate they all were, that nobody even really batted an eye upon seeing Kirito unveiling the dual-wielding skill that he'd warily kept hidden for so long. Everyone were too busy trying to break the siege of the attacking monsters to ever really have time to point fingers.

This was the Aincrad that Princess Henrietta of Tristain arrived to.

XXX

She'd been forewarned, true, but nothing could've truly prepared her for seeing one of the golems that the people of Aincrad called 'NPCs' with her own two eyes.

They looked like dolls, except not really. Not like the mechanical alviss did. There was the impossibly perfect skin of a doll, there was the eerily empty gaze of a doll, but it was just somehow _too close_ to being a human than what could be ignored.

Had she perhaps been more prone to superstition, Henrietta was certain that she would've reacted in a potentially offensive manner. As it was, she flinched and she kept a wary eye on them at all times.

The people of Aincrad didn't seem to mind, and Henrietta had the peculiar impression that – had they not long since grown used to the golems' presence – they considered her unease to be a perfectly sensible course of action.

The citizens themselves were an eclectic bunch as well. She didn't see much of the children hidden away and kept safe during the siege, but even so there were a great diversity in ages. No, perhaps that was untrue. Many of the ones present looked barely old enough to graduate from the Academy of Magic. And yet they'd already been fighting for two years.

She'd known to expect youth amongst these people, but the sight of a woman her own age dressed in armor and being referred to as the leader of one of the biggest 'front-line guilds' had still come as a bit of a shock.

Though it made an often-neglected part of her romantic heart curiously intrigued upon realizing that the dark-clad boy that would sometimes appear at her side was in all likelihood more than a simple 'friend'. The two youths looked good together, easily leaning into each other's presence without much conscious thought.

It would've been sweet had she not seen the dark circles around their eyes, or the exhaustion that sometimes caused their hands to tremble.

This was a war-zone, and these were two youths in love. A recipe for misery had there ever been one, Henrietta reflected bitterly. It reminded her a bit too much of the man she herself had secretly sworn her heart to, and the distance and dangers currently forcing them apart.

Hearing that the boy in question was considered the 'strongest' swordsman in Aincrad just made it more unsettling. Was not war meant for adults? Why must it then be the youths and children who suffer through it?

Asuna, the Flash; Kirito, the Black Swordsman. Titles gained from their abilities, even if some muttered darkly about the boy, a single word slipping past their lips as if it was a curse. 'Beater'. Perhaps a secondary and less flattering title, perhaps something more, Henrietta didn't know enough to understand for sure.

Either way, it was a word never mentioned by the people from the 'front-lines', and perhaps that pointed towards some modicum of respect? Henrietta knew enough that it would likely be quite rude indeed to go digging into it, and in the end a bit of caustic name-calling was largely irrelevant to her reason for being there.

She was there to help the citizens of Aincrad break the siege, and to remove the monsters that were plaguing her country. Nothing more, and nothing less.

XXX

By the time of her arrival, the defenders were down to ten Floors all of which were still classified as being the 'front-line', though the bottom four had been cleared from anything not flight-capable long before Tristain had lent them aid. The problem that had persisted in clearing the rest from all of the attacking monsters – oddly referred to as 'mobs' by the populace – was that the stairs between Floors were not exactly suited for fortifications.

Too open, and too easily ambushed. And even if some of the stronger monsters appeared perfectly willing to linger on their 'assigned' Floors, quite a large number of them were trying to move downwards.

Seeing mobs from the fifty-first Floor on the sixth was not unusual, and the people of Aincrad didn't really have the manpower to properly defend across such a large front.

But with Henrietta's troops came magic, and with magic came earth-mages. It was really only a matter of time before they managed to completely secure the stairs between Floors by raising a fortress at the top of it, even if it depleted said earth-mages' willpower for the close future.

On top of that, with Tristain's – meager, but not completely nonexistent – navy circling Aincrad and shooting down all the flying monsters trying to get around their defenses or escape, there was no longer any need for Aincrad's 'Clearers' to spread themselves out. Allowing them instead to focus all of their attention on defending a single Floor from the advancing monsters.

Henrietta could admit to feeling both a little impressed, and a little intimidated, at exactly how efficiently they made use of that advantage.

Aincrad didn't have mages, they simply had swordsmen and swordsmen and even more swordsmen. There were some variations of course, with some using pikes or halberds or axes or a great deal of many different types of swords, but swordsmen were prevalent. And yet, despite not having the blessings of the Founder on their side, they were beginning to push the mobs back all on their lonesome.

The more she watched, the more it became obvious that they needed Tristain for the fortifications they could provide to the stairs between Floors, and they needed them for the navy keeping the flight-capable monsters in check, but they most certainly didn't need their help when it simply came to 'killing monsters'.

Horrifying beasts that would've taken a group of mages to defeat were at times brought down by a single swordsman. And it was terrifying.

This was a people that knew nothing of the words of Brimir, and spoke not a word of religion of any sort. It was the kind of thing that the Church wouldn't have hesitated in squashing through force at first opportunity. So Henrietta shouldn't be getting too close to them in preparation for what was likely going to be quite a political scandal, except she needed their assistance to rid her land of the monsters, and she desperately wanted the useful foothold of a flying fortress in the upcoming war against the Reconquista – because Tristain was too tempting a target for her to ever assume that there wouldn't be a war, sooner or later.

She needed them, and they were powerful enough that she wasn't sure that her armies could subdue them. Not to mention that she didn't actually _want_ to rid herself of these innocent victims that she couldn't help but pity, or the fact that the calculating part of her heart was very much looking forward to seeing these swordsmen being set loose on those traitorous Reconquista dogs.

A conundrum, where they needed her a lot less than she'd originally been anticipating, and their worth to her as allies suddenly skyrocketed.

Still, they'd reached the eleventh Floor now. Only ninety Floors left to clear.

XXX

Karin wasn't entirely certain how to deal with her youngest daughter.

The girl had finally – after nearly a week of visibly bleak moods – begun pulling her life back together. Except she still couldn't do magic, and it was rather painfully obvious that she had no idea what to do about things.

The only respite from this rather uncomfortable situation was the strange almost-gryphon Louise had ridden to the estate and its peculiar willingness to remain in the area. Or rather, the way that it seemed to have taken a liking to Louise, enough so that it was unwilling to leave said area.

Had the atmosphere of the estate been more... 'normal' than it currently was, with how most of the Valliere family all found themselves walking on eggshells – some more blatantly than others – then Cattleya would've likely been quite jealous that her younger sister had managed to befriend an animal that only begrudgingly accepted her own presence.

Gentle though the girl might be, she'd always had a strange fascination with domesticating predators. And now it was Louise doing it instead.

Unfortunately, Cattleya had always worn her heart on her sleeves, and it was obvious to anyone paying attention that the reason why she _wasn't_ jealous was because she was still properly horrified about Louise being expelled from the Academy. Which meant that Louise had taken to not-quite avoiding her beloved older sister in an attempt to not be reminded of exactly why she wasn't currently in school.

There was a distinctly awkward feel to the air of the Valliere estate, even if Louise seemed to finally be accepting that she most definitely had a place under their roof. Magic or no.

Though Karin was still quite skeptical to as to how a girl who _exploded everything she pointed her wand at_ could possibly be classified as not having any magic whatsoever. Not that she was going to be mentioning that until Louise reached the point where giving her hope might not cause her to throw herself off a tower or some overly emotional nonsense like that.

Bloody teenagers and their bloody drama.

XXX

Henrietta had a problem.

Albion was coming closer to falling by the day, and the Reconquista would take any opportunity to break the potential alliance between Tristain and Germania in order to leave them easy prey. The alliance that was founded on a potential marriage.

The more thought she put into that particular situation – and she generally tried not to pay any attention to it whatsoever, because she didn't want to think about Wales dying in battle and herself marrying some barbarian emperor – the more she was coming to the conclusion that Wales – the wonderful romantic fool – had probably saved her letter.

The letter where she spoke of love and promises. The letter that would _definitely_ make Germania turn their backs on her country should they ever learn of it. The letter that would very soon likely be in the grasp of Reconquista.

She needed to remove that letter from Albion.

The problem arose in how to do it. She couldn't send someone she didn't trust on such a mission of utmost importance. At the same time, she couldn't send anyone who could be linked back to her on such a mission, lest rumors begin to crop up wondering for what reason she was trying to contact Albion's prince.

No, she needed someone she could trust, who wouldn't be missed, wouldn't fail in their task, and wouldn't implicate her if they failed.

It was a shame that she didn't have anyone like that. Certainly, she had Agnes who could be trusted and who'd complete the task without fail, but the woman was her personal bodyguard and would make Henrietta's involvement in matters far too blatantly obvious to anyone curious. And she supposed that she had Louise – mischievous little daredevil that she'd been in their childhoods – whom she trusted and wouldn't be missed, but Henrietta knew far too well that there had been a substantial amount of rumors about a great deal of problems for the youngest Valliere in the area of the 'practical implementation of magic'.

Henrietta wasn't sure if she was pleased or frustrated at the realization that she couldn't send her childhood friend into a war-zone. On the one hand, it meant that the Reconquista was likely to be able to break any alliance that might've served to protect Tristain from their inevitable invasion, but on the other she didn't _want_ to send small and adorable little Louise into a war-zone.

No, she'd have to find another way.

She couldn't ask anyone she'd trust to bring a message in her name. So it stood to reason that she'd have to find someone she _didn't_ trust. Or some _thing_ at any rate.

There were ways to send messages across large distances, and even if it was likely to be intercepted, if she sent enough of them one or two should be able to make it through the Reconquista dogs and their heretical siege.

"Wales, I'm sorry. It is the will of my people. Burn it. - Henrietta."

It was as non-incriminating as she could make it whilst still hopefully making it obvious to him of what she was speaking.

She could only hope that the letter would reach him in time.

She'd rather marry one of non-magical citizens of Aincrad than a barbarian emperor, but she was the Crown Princess, soon to be Queen. She would do as her country demanded of her, as was her duty.

XXX

There had been a great deal of confusion when Tristain's navy had first appeared around Aincrad. Partly because sailing-ships weren't supposed to be able to fly, and partly because the players had been trapped on their lonesome and the news of an entirely separate group of people making an appearance was taken with at least a few grains of salt.

Then there'd been the magic. The way that these people could raise an entire fortress out of the ground in less than a day. The way these mages could throw fire and water and ice and wind lightning and who-knows-what-else.

Then there'd been the culture-shock. The soldiers praying to some mythical 'Founder' that once walked the earth and granted the nobles their magic. The way they reacted to NPCs with outright horror instead of the mild unease that most other felt for them after Aincrad's transition to this new place.

Barely a week into first beginning to receive aid, and a historian stepped up to point out that it would likely be a _very bad idea_ to argue theology with these people. Since apparently religions throughout history had all had an unfortunate tendency to hold onto its worshipers with violence, and a Church that had remained undivided for _six-thousand years_ likely only survived to that age by being very enthusiastic about dealing with dissenters. Lethally enthusiastic.

No, there'd been a very clear warning passed around throughout Aincrad to not mention religion in the presence of the people from Tristain. There was really no need to call down some kind of inquisition on their heads if they could avoid it, after all.

Still, the flying navy and the fortress-building mages were a great help in their continued war against the mobs bearing down on them.

There were some questions raised to whether or not they should even bother fighting to keep Aincrad, seeing as most had some rather bad memories of the place and would've probably enjoyed starting anew _anywhere_ else. On the other hand, nobody knew whether or not this overly-enthusiastic Church of theirs would decide that they were all subhuman or something and try and burn them at the stake.

Nobody wanted to take that chance, and Aincrad was a fairly defensible position, even if they'd need to figure out a way to build a few of those flying ships of their own, if they wanted to actually defend it from an invading army.

Then the Crown Princess Henrietta of Tristain made an appearance, and the guild-leaders got their first look at the magical royalty of this strange world. And it was definitely a new world, a world filled with people. Not NPCs, but actual _people_.

By then most were actually starting to get a bit relieved at how Aincrad had ended up being explained as having been pretty much unchanged since the beginning of their imprisonment at Kayaba's hands. Nobody really wanted to try explaining the concept of 'video games' to a bunch of religious people who may or may not be looking for any kind of reason whatsoever to lit them on fire and cheer as they died.

The historian's original explanations had gotten pretty damn vivid after a certain amount of retellings.

If Kirito and most of the other Clearers hadn't grown so used to being thrown curve-balls at various intervals – as in, whenever Kayaba's game-engine decided that they were progressing too easily – they would've probably been a lot more uncomfortable with the situation than they were.

As it was, things were almost beginning to return to some semblance of normalcy. Only with a lot more blood and gore, and magic, and quite a number of people losing their lunches, or losing their lives.

Kirito had gotten pretty good at compartmentalizing over the years, and Klein even managed to crack jokes. With the exception of Asuna now being in charge of the «Knights of the Blood» and the aforementioned newly enhanced combat-patches that'd been released upon the players, things were meandering along in a distinctly familiar pattern.

Climb to the next Floor, kill all the mobs, climb to the next Floor, kill all the mobs. Why, it was almost nostalgic sometimes.

Asuna didn't seem to much agree with him on that point, and her new position of responsibility made her unfortunately disinclined to taking comfortable naps in the sunlight, but cooking had always been the girl's way of winding down after a long day so at least Kirito still managed to score some amazing lunches. As long as he managed to trigger the quest-flags for spending some time together with her.

Life was pretty comfortable. If one completely ignored the high risk of death, the way blood was really difficult to wash out of clothing, the complications when dealing with natural healing, the way it could take some people hours of gruesome torture before they died from their wounds, the backbreaking work of digging graves for the corpses of old friends, along with the general annoyance of having to carry things around outside of the game-menu.

You know, small things.

Otherwise, life was just peachy.

XXX

Karin wasn't entirely certain if she ought to be annoyed or intrigued at the way the almost-gryphon had led others of its kind to their estate.

By now, there were almost a dozen of them, and yet the news of monster-attacks were actually beginning to taper off in the area. Her youngest daughter was taming the monsters that had been plaguing Tristain for over a month now.

On the one hand, it was impressive. Both as a proof of her abilities, but also in how she'd managed to turn an enemy into a potential future resource. On the other hand, it was possible that Louise's taming of the almost-gryphons would create some unpleasant political ramifications.

After all, nobody trusted something they didn't understand, and beast-like though they were there was a spark of intelligence in their eyes. Who was to say that they would not turn on them at an inadvertent time?

There was a reason why Karin had grown so fond of the phrase 'the only good enemy is a dead enemy'.

Still, the flock of almost-gryphons was keeping her daughter busy. And she rather desperately needed that, considering just how fragile her mental and emotional state remained. She would certainly recover in due time, but the best way to actually allow for time to make a difference was to fill it with something that she could actually _do_.

Karin counted almost a dozen almost-gryphons lingering on the Valliere lands. She suspected that it would grow larger yet in the close future.

And that wasn't even considering the possibility of the beasts beginning to nest.

Karin sipped her tea. It would be interesting to see how the military climate of Halkeginia might change should the Valliere family suddenly find themselves with enough almost-gryphons that they could field a decent military force riding them.

It would at the very least come in handy in the assured future conflict with the Reconquista and their navy.

XXX

Albion had fallen.

Henrietta wasn't sure if she was furious or resigned or shocked or simply despairing. She felt numb.

Wales was dead. Gone. Killed.

Albion had fallen and the Reconquista were by all accounts carefully biding their time, not wanting to begin their inevitable invasion of their neighboring countries until they wouldn't have to risk dealing with Tristain's current monster-infestation with their own manpower.

Albion had fallen, and Wales was dead. Dead and forever out of her reach. Dead and completely unable to burst into the church halls at the last moment and steal her away from her coming marriage to the barbarian emperor.

Wales was _dead_.

For the first time since her arrival, and despite the wishes of her advisors, for the first time since arriving in Aincrad to aid in the removal of the monsters, Crown Princess Henrietta of Tristain personally marched into battle.

The monsters had really had some fantastic timing, why, right there was one of those 'Floor Bosses'. From what was being said it seemed to have originated from the seventy-third Floor. One Floor above the one whom that heroic Heathcliff had managed to defeat at the cost of his own life.

How wonderfully convenient.

Henrietta had really been looking forward to a bit of violence today.

XXX

"Guess that's why she's in charge." Kirito commented, mouth dry.

Asuna made a sound which was probably agreement.

The Floor Boss was being slowly _grounded_ to death by a gigantic _tornado of water_.

It was almost enough to make them feel just the tiny little bit pitying of the monster.

Kirito had heard that one of Tristain's neighboring countries had fallen to revolutionaries. An old ally, likely meaning that she had some personal attachment to the royal family of the place. The royal family which had of course either died in battle or been executed by whoever was in charge now.

Yeah, Kirito could imagine why something like that could make someone a bit enthusiastic about resorting to violence. He still remembered what he'd been like after Sachi, and back then he'd come disturbingly close to lashing out at Klein with lethal intent. Too desperate for the unlikely hope of the reward that the Event-Boss had been said to drop to even consider that trying to solo it could've so very easily landed him with the title of 'suicidal'.

He remembered what he'd looked like in the mirror back then, and – watching the Crown Princess now – Kirito hoped that he would never have to see that kind of expression on anyone's face again.

Even if this particular beat-down was kind of terrifyingly effective.

XXX

By the time they managed to reach the fiftieth Floor, there wasn't a lot left of the mobs that tried to lay siege to Aincrad. Or rather, that statement had already been true once they'd reached the twentieth Floor and the original siege had been well and truly broken, leaving the remaining mobs to fight on the defensive.

Perhaps more accurately was that once they'd reached the fiftieth Floor there were only six Bosses left to defeat – unless there was one hidden away on the hundredth Floor, nobody were entirely sure on that account – and all of them seemed to have hidden themselves away in labyrinthine cave-systems on the upper Floors, rather than attempt to fight the Clearers head-on.

Some of the defeated ones had been terrifying on their lonesome, some had surrounded themselves with armies, some had attacked, some had constructed unsettlingly cunning ambushes, and some had simply fortified their position to the point where they'd needed an entire squadron of mages to root it out enough that the rest of them could actually fight it.

Kirito forever solidified his title as 'the strongest swordsman' after near-soloing one of the Bosses – the extent of which he'd done it 'alone' varied depending on who told the story. Asuna somehow ended up finding an engagement ring at some point. Quite a large amount of people got very nervous about two of their most prominent fighters hooking up – and the potential culture-clashes in regards to however marriage worked in Halkeginia. And Henrietta was sincerely considered by all who knew her to be a warrior-queen in-the-making – despite her advisors continued insistence that she not get involved in the actual battles.

It was also during the clearing of the fiftieth Floor that the Reconquista finally made their move.

By attacking Germania.

It'd come as a shock to everyone, because the revolutionaries were horribly outgunned against Germania's forces, but apparently they still didn't want to deal with clearing Aincrad themselves when they could simply swoop in later and conquer Tristain when its armies were already exhausted from doing that very thing.

Still, the reason for attacking at all quickly became apparent when word started to spread about what the conditions for living under the Reconquista's rule were truly like.

Starvation, abuse of power, corruption, theft, bandits. The list went on and on, and the only way which Albion could really justify its treatment of its own subjects – which was quite necessary in order to remain in good standing amongst the commoners whom they relied so thoroughly upon – was to find someone to declare war on, because everyone knew that such conditions were to expected in war-times. And with Tristain's recently acquired uncomfortable monster-problem, Germania was apparently the only option that made sense.

Which actually rather blatantly proved who'd been funding the Reconquista's war in Albion. 'The Mad King of Gallia' indeed.

With fifty Floors down, and fifty Floors to go, Tristain very pointedly didn't say much of anything about Aincrad and its citizens to Romalia and the Church.

XXX

Henrietta wasn't sure what to make of the reports of what was happening at the Valliere estate. Specifically, what the reports were saying in regards to the monsters that had apparently completely stopped ravaging Tristain's countryside.

She was glad to hear that she wouldn't have to spend precious manpower trying to defend against an enemy with greater mobility than any common-born soldier could ever manage, she was glad to hear that a threat to her subjects had been dealt with. She was completely blindsided by the actual reasons stated in the report however.

Little Louise was taming them.

Oh, it didn't actually _say_ that. It was saying that the Valliere lands were almost entirely overrun by the monsters, but that they were being fed and cared for and seemed quite peaceful about their presence there. It was also pointing out that it had apparently begun when the youngest daughter had 'ridden one home', though exactly why little Louise wasn't at the Academy was never mentioned or even hinted at.

Henrietta had a bad feeling about that.

On the other hand, it was good to see that her old friend was finding her own place in the world, even if Henrietta was certain that some very crude individuals might say things that would certainly not bear repeating in decent company. Mostly in regards to how this before unseen ability on her part had not emerged from spells and magic, but was instead based entirely around the taming of mere beasts. It was the kind of crude comments that would likely see someone burned at the stake should it ever be proven true.

However, Henrietta knew her old friend was _far_ too prudish to ever get involved in something like _that_ , so she wasn't feeling overly worried about the matter. Should such words be spoken, there would be more than enough overly violent individuals willing to lend aid in curing the gossipers of their insolently wagging tongues.

No, of much more importance was the actual fact that these monsters actually _could be tamed_. Something which she doubted the citizens of Aincrad had ever even truly considered. Certainly not in regards to actual dangerous 'mobs' in any case.

Still, that meant that perhaps there was a good cause to avoid completely wiping the various species out of existence, but it didn't change much for the actual situation of Aincrad's front-line.

Men and women fought and died, mages succumbed to willpower-exhaustion, gunpowder ran dry, and sails were torn to shreds. The war continued, one Floor at a time.

XXX

XXX

XXX **Epilogue** XXX

XXX

The rush of air was the same as always, the same as it'd been even when she'd been a child and her mother had taken her with her on her flights. It was the same, but it never stopped bringing a smile to Louise's face.

Every time it was a reassurance, every time was a wonderful rush of the vicious satisfaction of knowing that she wasn't a _zero_ , no matter what her academical records might showcase.

Her spells still exploded, magic seemed to forever remain out of her reach, but she was a _Valliere_ , and nobody could ever take that away from her. She was the youngest of three sisters, and she was an old childhood playmate of the Crown Princess that had recently become Queen.

And, perhaps most importantly, she was the person the almost-gryphons listened to when orders were being shouted. There'd been much talk over what to name the many strange beasts of Aincrad currently occupying the lands of the Valliere family, but none had ever really struck Louise as particularly important ones to remember. In the end, the almost-gryphons were what they were, and everyone who knew anything at all about them knew that they were _hers_.

Hundreds of wings beating the air as the rest of the flock took to the air behind her, Louise briefly entertained the thought of what her 'runic name' could end up being, because surely no enemy of Tristain could watch a force of a hundred flying monsters attack in formation at her command, and classify her existence too unimportant for a monicker to be added to her name.

It might never be a _true_ kind of runic name, seeing as it would not be based on her proficiency with magic, but there was a certain ecstatic anticipation of finding a way to forever shed that accursed 'zero' from her name.

Germania had won, their defenses proving too powerful for the Reconquista's armies to break through. But even if Germania might've perhaps had them before the war began, by the time the retreat was sounded, they no longer had the ships to launch a counterattack with. They could defend against the revolutionaries without issue, but they were unable to attack them in turn.

A stalemate, even if Germania was the clear victor of the conflict. The Reconquista had retreated with barely a fraction of what they had started with, and Germania was merely inconvenienced.

No, those heretical revolutionaries were hidden away on their floating island, sullenly licking their wounds.

Tristain remained untouched, and there were rumors spreading they were already searching for the final flight of stairs between Aincrad's Floors.

Soon, that conflict too would come to an end, and then there'd been some very interesting talk of Louise being given a regiment all to herself, leaving her in charge of as many soldiers as she could convince into learning how to ride the beasts of her flock.

Oh yes, Louise grinned to herself. The reason why she couldn't help but smile every time she took to the air was that the rush of wind on her face and the sound of beating wings tasted like _victory_.

XXX

The hundredth Floor was empty.

There was no village that could've substituted for a Safe Zone back in the day, there were no great forests that could've hidden mobs, there were no lakes or desserts or marshes or mountains or grasslands.

It was just an empty room. Gigantic, the size of a cathedral, and completely empty.

It reminded Kirito more of a Boss Room than it did of anything else. And yes, right there, in the middle of it all stood one single thing.

A throne. A large one, big enough that its backrest along with the pedestal it was on, all but dominated the room.

And yet its actual seat was clearly designed for something the size of a human.

It took Kirito a moment to register that, to comprehend what that meant, and then he _understood_.

Had this been the game, had this still been SAO, a single person would've broken off from the Clearing group now. He would've walked forward with calm steps, and then, just before the throne, he would've turned towards them.

And, smiling like a benevolent king, he would've betrayed them all.

A masterpiece. An exquisite story of hope and betrayal and friends turning on each other with hate and murder. That was what he had been aiming to create with this moment.

This wasn't the game though. SAO had long since been abandoned for a reality that should never have been their own. So, instead of a knight clad in white and red, Kirito was the one who stepped forward.

Because he _understood_ , and from the wary confusion on the faces of all the ones present, he was the only one.

The sound of his footsteps echoed across the immense room as he climbed the small pedestal to the throne. Then he unsheathed his sword, and with all his power, he buried it into the seat with a sound much akin to nails on a chalkboard.

A dark throne, and a bright sword buried almost to the hilt in its seat. The material of the throne something that Kirito would've probably classified as either 'stone' or 'weak metal'.

It was a statement, a curse, a refusal of the position that this final Floor of Kayaba's taunted them with. The cruel knowledge that he'd been there all along, watching them, toying with them, mocking them, and that in the end they would've only been freed of his prison at his leisure. Never simply their own abilities.

A throne that nobody would ever sit in, because of the sword that Kirito had just defiantly plunged into its seat.

He might've once been something like a god, in SAO, but in this world, in this reality, Kayaba had merely been a human suddenly forced to live the role of another or be killed by the humans he'd so heartlessly sacrificed to his own ambition.

Kayaba Akihiko had died wearing the face of a stranger, and his throne would be forever spat upon by all who ventured to the final Floor of Aincrad.

When he turned back, and returned to the others at the entrance, none of them commented on the tear-tracks across his cheeks.

Most of them didn't _understand_ , but they didn't need to truly know the story of Heathcliff to make their own connection to finding a single throne at the end of their journey. They saw, and they hated the mockery that Kayaba would've made of their suffering and their sacrifices.

Asuna took his hand in her own, the metal band's distinct texture against his skin as their fingers intertwined. She was crying too.

This was their freedom. Their final freedom.

And forever divorced from their own reality, their victory tasted like despair.

XXX

It was strange, how in their moment of victory, Aincrad's morale fell like a rock.

Or, well, it would've been strange without knowing the story behind it.

They'd been trapped in Aincrad by a heretical madman who'd promised them that they'd be able to return to their families. Who'd told them that he'd left a way to return back home on the final Floor.

After their arrival in Tristain and the erratic behavior of the beasts within the floating castle, everyone had known that that path back home had disappeared from them. They'd known that there was no way to get back to their loved ones. But then the siege had happened and everyone had been too busy scrambling to survive to stop and actually think about what it meant. And even when that siege broke, it was a return to the norm in how the Clearers continued to fight their way past Floor after Floor.

But now that was finished. Aincrad had been Cleared, and yet they had no way to get back home.

For the first time since their arrival, people started to _understand_ what that meant.

Henrietta carefully pulled her soldiers away from more populated areas, allowing them to celebrate the victory for what it was, without offending the despairing people who were only now beginning to truly comprehend that they would never see their families again. That they were still trapped within Aincrad's walls.

Certainly, they could hitch a ride on one of the ships down to Tristain, but it was obvious to anyone who paid attention that their cultures were different, that the people of Aincrad didn't really understand nobility, or believe that a society ruled by magic was the only thing that made sense.

They weren't the Reconquista, and they were keeping their opinions carefully to themselves, but it was plain to see if one knew where to look.

The people of Aincrad might be able to leave their floating castle, but Tristain most definitely wasn't their home, and so what had previously been a physical trap had now become one of culture and traditions. They could leave, but they came from a country so far away that none of Halkeginia could imagine it, let alone find a way to transport them back there. Aincrad was their home now, even if it was their prison, and without any way to return to their own country, the mood was rapidly plummeting.

Aincrad was a nation in mourning.

Except, then the leader of the Knights of the Blood sent out a message for everyone to gather on the first Floor.

And Henrietta watched curiously as the young woman climbed up on an improvised stage.

"My brother should've been here instead. But he let me go in his stead, because he had things to do." Her voice sounded clear across the crowd, even as it was rather obviously an emotional thing for her to say. "I was trapped. Just like we were all trapped. And now I can never see him again."

There was a long moment of silence, as she took a deep breath.

"Everyone here has lost someone. Some of us have lost more than others, but we've all lost something. We might never get over it, it might always linger. But they're _alive and well_! They will live! They will mourn! And then they will be happy!" Asuna glared out at the crowd, almost daring anyone to contradict her. "To us, let that be our closure! That they will live! We might never see them again! We might never find a way back home! But they're _alive_! Let that be enough!"

There were murmurs amidst the crowd, some agreeing, others disagreeing.

"They're alive. We're alive. It hurts. But we're alive! And the people around you are alive as well!" Asuna took a deep breath, and placed her hand on her stomach. Then she suddenly flushed from some odd mixture of embarrassment and some other emotion, rather visibly fumbling for words. "And I don't want my child to grow up surrounded by gloomy faces!"

Henrietta boggled.

Asuna couldn't be much older than her, and yet-...? Yes, that hand over her stomach, the way her equally young husband shifted in guilty embarrassment. Asuna 'The Flash' was pregnant.

There was silence, as more than one person outright gaped at the young woman, but then Klein raised his voice with obvious glee. "Kirito, you sly dog you!" And just like that, pandemonium erupted.

In hindsight, Henrietta should probably have been more surprised that it'd taken the citizens of Aincrad nearly three years of imprisonment before anyone managed to get knocked-up, than she was surprised at the young couple apparently being on their way to parenthood.

But that didn't make the huge shift in mood amongst the people gathered on the giant square of the first Floor any less exhilarating.

They might've been a nation in mourning, but they were also one suddenly struck with the need to celebrate new beginnings. Something which was clearly being egged on by the opportunity to poke fun at Asuna's husband and his inability to 'keep it in his pants'.

Henrietta stared out over the gathered crowd, and she wondered to herself where the floating castle, Aincrad, would go from here.

Shaking her head a little, Henrietta decided that wherever their paths led them, that she'd try to keep them away from causing any offense to Romalia and the Church of the Founder. She liked these people and their slightly bizarre culture.

They were good people.

XXX

 **A/n: Yup, it ends here. Kind of abrupt, and without delving too deeply into the characters of SAO, but it's in a place that I feel comfortable with ending it in. After all, this isn't so much a story of Kirito and the gang as it is a story of how the kingdom of Aincrad became a part of Halkeginia.**

 **As a side-note (since I myself had to look it up when writing this fic in order to dodge her complicated existence) I'll say this now. In SAO-canon, Yui shows up after the defeat of the 74th Floor Boss. In this fic the transition occurs closely after the defeat of the 71st Floor Boss. In other words, Yui has no presence in this fic and would never appear in the world. I'm not entirely happy about doing that to her (I was always quite fond of her character), but I'm not even** _ **remotely**_ **willing to try and explore the semi-philosophical NPC/person argument with her as a focal point in the middle of the rest of this whole mess.**

 **As for Kayaba, the poetic justice of his situation was finally decided upon after tearing my hair out over how Aincrad would react to him being executed by the Church for heresy or something (should they ever have found out who he was). This decision was made mainly an attempt to avoid a culture-clash between the modern world and Halkeginia's view of rightful punishments.**

 **Thank you for reading, and an extra thanks to those who've left reviews.**


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